Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The Art of Marketing Part 1 Blog Tours.


     I have been in a couple of blog tours before, and have enjoyed helping to promote my fellow writers. There are some do’s and don’ts that you have to remember in order to be successful. A Blog tour is a virtual one, held entirely on the internet.  It also may be called a Blog Hop. What you do is have other bloggers “host” your book/promotion, which in turn helps to advertise others blogs.

     Creating a blog tour requires preparation.  Having other bloggers post things to promote your work, means that you need to gather material for them to post.  This can include anything from Interview questions, story snippets, and character bios.  They should include links to everyone’s blog (those who are hosting), and also include a schedule of who is next up on the blog tour.  The blog tour is for the person who is needing promotion, but can, and should help build followers for the hosts.

     Part of the preparation is getting people to host your book. The next part is to make dates for it.   The third part is to make materials for it. 

     To get your hosts, you can put out a call to any writers group on Facebook (asking the admins first); or even send out a tweet from your twitter. You need to get people on board, because you want to try to get as many people as you can. This would make the tour one blog a day. So you have something every day.  
     
     You can also put out a questionnaire, of what the host would like to do for you.  This can be any of the aforementioned ideas.  Character Bio, Interviews (even character interviews), etc. You should have a calendar with whom is participating, and what they are doing.  That way you can put it on your blog, website, author page etc. 

     Do be polite, make sure you thank your hosts. I would even post links to their books and promote your hosts back. After all, this is all probably done for free, so it’s really nice to help the hosts out.
Don’t be an asshat!  You really only get a first chance to make a good impression.  Be professional, and polite, you will get much further if you do.





The next part of my blog won’t be out for a bit. My dog is having surgery for a mass on his hind end, my brother had a broken sewing needle in his foot (which caused infection to the bone), and a huge move in the next few weeks…so I have to take a rather large break from the blog.  Stay tuned, and keep checking.   The next Blog is on Book Releases.  You can also follow me on Facebook:  

https://www.facebook.com/LAnneWooleyAuthor


No comments:

Post a Comment